


upended monotony

by Anukutti



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: <-- that's an actual fucking tag?, Big Sister Aranea Highwind, Child Neglect, Gen, MT Prompto Argentum, Other, Poor Prompto Argentum, Poverty, thank god
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2019-11-13 15:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18034352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anukutti/pseuds/Anukutti
Summary: Fifteen year old Aranea Highwind knew she had no home to go back to.The sleeping child she carried in her arms never had a home in the first place.





	1. Monotony

Aranea Highwind’s mom and dad were two (relatively) respectable people. They had stable, well-paying jobs, they were well-liked within their community, they had one teenaged daughter with a few behavioral issues (but they were working through that, they said to the neighbors the second time their daughter wrecked their arctic willows, tire grooves running all throughout their backyard), and they lived in a moderately-sized single family home in the suburbs of Gralea.

Aranea herself hated the monotony. The same snow, the same schedule, day in and day out - it was driving her mad. Her parents would never understand her - they never tried to in the first place. If they’d never meet her halfway, she’d just never try, and that much was fair, right?

It didn’t matter, anyways. Aranea and her parents barely talked. Their well-paying jobs were at the Gralean research facility, doing some biomedical engineering something-or-other that was boring enough to lose her after two seconds. All the good it did for her was pay for her education, her food, and get her out of school once a month, when her parents would take her to work with them for “family bonding” because the family counselor said it was “good for them,” even though they’d always drop her off with one of the interns as soon as they walked through the doors, because Astrals forbid they watch their own daughter. But it all worked out in the end, because Aranea would usually take a nap or pester the intern, then wait for the day to be over.

As she was currently doing.

“Tell me, intern lady, why did you pick this job?” Aranea wasn’t even looking at her, mindlessly spinning a lock of her silver hair seemingly without a care in the world.

The intern, a twenty-something who was sick and tired of Aranea’s shit already, merely grit her teeth. “I picked this job because I wanted the opportunity to see how government research functioned for reference for my future career. Don’t you have homework to be doing?”

“Yeah,” said Aranea. She sat up. “What’re you supposed to be doing?”

“Uh, writing these l- did you just say you had homework?”

“Um, yeah?” Aranea gave her a look. “Are you deaf?”

The intern gripped her fist tightly. “Shouldn’t you be doing your school work? You know, the work you just said you had?”

“Just because I have work doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it.” Now it was Aranea’s turn to roll her eyes. “Do you even like your job, uh…” Aranea leaned over the desk to peer at the little silver name card. “Umeiyra? Yeah. You like it in this dump?”

Umeiyra rolled her eyes in exasperation. “It’s not a _dump_ , it’s a perfectly respectable research facility,” she grumbled. “You’d benefit from learning some respect.”

“Says the one with the inside cover of her notebook decorated with ‘Verstael Besithia deserves to be castr-”

“ _Okay_ , young Miss Highwind!” Umeiyra cuts her off loudly, punctuating her sentence with the loud snap of her notebook slamming shut. “Why don’t you take a walk around the facility? You’re too old to be babysat by me, right? How old are you, again, fourteen?”

“Fifteen in two months,” Aranea gloated.

“Right, basically fifteen, so please, in the most respectful way possible, get. The hell. Out.” Umeiyra pushed her out the door and slammed it shut behind her. Only once she heard the clack-clack-clack of school-issued shoes walking away did she sag against the door in relief.

_Thank the Astrals._

Aranea burst in a minute later. “My mom caught me; she said if you kick me out again, you’re fired.” She smirked.

Umeiyra groaned.

-

She went to school the next day. Her eyes burned from having stayed up late, reading books about fantastical lands away from the snowy lands of Niflheim, far out from the icy seas. Elaborate depictions of Altissia waded in her mind, the idea of a city on water that didn’t have to worry about ice so very novel to her. She wondered what it would look like from the top, like on a map.

But paraphernalia about the outside world was banned in Niflheim, as all of it is apparently propaganda - even, Aranea assumed, the maps, so she’d just have to make do with her imagination and settle with the fact that she’d never leave Niflheimian borders. It was fine. She had geography class to get her fix.

“Miss Highwind!” A sharp voice from the front of the room brought Aranea back to Eos.

“Y-Yes, sir.”

“If you desire to sleep so much, maybe you’d rather leave school altogether and sleep at home? How does that sound?”

Giggles were heard from around the classroom.

“No, sir.” She lowered her head, cheeks burning in part shame, part rage.

“Good. Now, going back to the lesson, after Niflheim nearly vanquished…”

It was fine.

-

It wasn’t fine when her parents found a map stuffed under her bed, one she’d ripped out from the back of an old atlus from her school’s horribly curated library, and then replaced with a forty gil note, hoping that either it’d be enough for repairs or the next person to open it (probably the librarian) would forgive her. Which was stupid, because no one would know it was her, so she didn’t need to ask for forgiveness. But it relieved the weight in her chest a little, and she guessed that was reason enough.

But her parents found it anyway, and the stupid weight came back full force, thousandfold, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was the crushing guilt of being a disappointment, something she’d fully believed she didn’t need to feel anymore because she was almost fifteen, goddammit, and fifteen-year-old girls don’t cry like babies when their parents yell at them, or need to be coddled after being told off because they’re crying so hard they’re shaking and hiccuping; they don’t ask for hugs from their parents, and they sure as hell don’t petulantly push them away after less than twenty seconds because they’re so embarrassed by their own actions, they can’t stand touching the very people who embarrassed her.

Aranea sulked in her room, eyes burning, nails digging crescent-shaped cuts into her palm, wondering how she managed to get caught.

She’d never let herself get caught like that again.

-

“Mom, please-”

“ ‘Nea, honey, you know what the nice counselor lady said-”

“Stop talking to me like I’m five! Just say Mrs. What’s-Her-Name and get on with your point!”

“Don’t talk back to me young lady - anyways, this is regularly scheduled bonding time! Please, just bear with this and be a good girl? For me?” Her mom finally turned around and gave her a look, warm grey eyes meeting cold, stormy ones.

Aranea looked at her mom narrowly. “Fine,” she grumbled.

“Oh, thank goodness,” her mom sighed, and leaned in for a hug.

Stiffening, Aranea put up with it. She didn’t like hugs, but this time, just maybe-

“Alright, well, I’m being paged right now, so I’ve got to leave, sweetie, see you!” Her mom dashed off, leaving Aranea in front of the intern’s office door - with a shiny grey keycard in her hand.

She chuckled darkly. “Love you too, Mom.”

Wasting no time, she hurried as quickly as she could through the halls without letting the clicking of her shoes alerting any of the guards of her presence. She had already run into them before, and by the Astrals, she was _never_ going to let herself live through that again.

Finally, she came across a large door that was locked with a large circular mechanism in the center. A little podium to her right caught her eye, and when she took a closer look, it read “ACCESS LEVEL: THREE.” She looked at her card. It read “ACCESS LEVEL: TEN.”

Aranea smiled. She was good.

After quickly swiping the card, she ducked into what appeared to be a storage room of sorts. Hearing footsteps behind her, she jumped behind a pile of boxes.

“...Yes, well, subject 87 has been particularly-”  
“Subject 87 has _always_ been quite the…”

Aranea waited until the voices were gone, then headed for the back of the room. She didn’t really have anything specific to look for in the back, only that she wanted anything that reeked of adventure, something to multiply the adrenaline pumping in her blood already. The door she stumbled upon, behind some particularly precariously positioned boxes, seemed to do the trick.

“ACCESS LEVEL: NINE,” it read.

“Well, guess what, bitch? I’m a ten,” Aranea smirked, and then swiped the card. The lights went out, just as the door slowly opened with a quiet _hiss_.

She stepped inside, and immediately the hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention.

Something was not right. Something was _very very_ wrong.

Rubbing her arms that already prickled with goosebumps, she took a closer look at her surroundings. The whole place was dimly lit, a soft blue light illuminating everything gently, enough so she could see where she was going, but not enough to really make sense of what was around her.

She rubbed her eyes. They were burning again. _I really need to stop straining them so hard in the dark,_ she thought to herself. _Maybe then I’d-_

A noise from her left caught her attention. She snapped to the direction she heard it, eyes wide.

“Hello?” She yelled. No response. “Who’s there?”

No response.

Merely a faint green glow, one so pathetic and weak, she didn’t even notice it when she first arrived here. She took a step closer. Another step. One more, tentatively, she inched forward, until her hands were on the glass of the tall, wide pod, as she peered inside to look into the opaque green sludge, just barely able to make out-

“ _Aranea Highwind!”_

She jumped. The slamming of the door was quickly followed by terse footsteps, the weight and cadence of which Aranea recognized as her mother.

“Mooooooom,” she groaned. “ _Please_ don’t make me go back! It’s so freaking boring in your stupid intern’s office, there’s nothing for me to do!”

“Exactly! You should be sitting in the ‘boring’ intern’s office, doing your homework, and _nothing else!_ ” She hissed at her daughter, gripping Aranea’s arm with such force, Aranea was afraid she was going to tear it clean off.

“M-Mom, please you’re hurting me-”

“It doesn’t matter!” Her mom shouted, echoing. The room suddenly became dead silent, event the buzzing of machinery seemingly fading away. “It doesn’t matter, Aranea, because you should’ve thought about the consequences of your actions- did you remember that session? The one about consequences?”

“Mom-”

“Well, clearly not, considering you stole my keycard and ran around the entire facility like a child!”

“Mom, really, _please_ let go-” If Aranea’s eyes were burning earlier, now they were on fire, simmering with tears threatening to spill over. She knew her arm would be bruised by the next morning.

“You know, I don’t understand why you insist on acting like a child if you truly don’t want to be treated like one!” She finally let go of Aranea, throwing her hands up into the air. Aranea immediately cradled her throbbing arm knowing there was already a bruise, tender and purple. “You kids and your _fucking_ rebellion.”

Aranea balked. Her mother never cursed at her before, and even though she’d speak like that all the time at school, something about it being directed at her (and from her mother, no less) made her blood turn to ice and the fire in her belly to putter out into an empty pit, the adrenaline long forgotten.

“We’re going home.” The tone was flat. Final. Aranea had no choice.

She straightened her posture. “Yes, mother.” She didn’t look up. Didn’t give Mrs. Highwind the satisfaction of seeing her bloodshot eyes. Wouldn’t look her in the eye.

She just followed her mom out the door. It would be fine.

-

Lying in bed that night without dinner made her contemplate a few things.

Firstly, she sure as fuck got caught again, even though she vowed not to. That self-inflicted shame was enough to set her insides on fire. She’d taken out her frustrations on her pillow, but all that got her was exhaustion and three warning knocks on her door. She was tempted to spit on it, but she at least had that much control not to ruin her door and possibly her nice carpet.

Secondly, the pod required further investigation, because even though she didn’t get a very good glance at the thing inside of it, she was certain of one thing, and it was that it had a _face_.

It had two eyes and a nose and a mouth that seemed barely more than a line, and its features were large and weirdly proportioned, like a tiny animal. She didn’t know what kind of creature they were testing on in the labs, but she knew that whatever was happening to that poor thing was in no way humane.

And thirdly, she began to understand that her parent’s morality was now called into question.

All her life, her parents were pushing her, forcing her, squeezing her into perfectly compartmentalized boxes of morals and ethics and whatnot for her to live in. Now that she knew what kind of sick things they were up to in that lab, she was definitely going to hold it against them and rub their hypocrisy in their faces.

 _Look at THAT, Mom, Dad,_ she’d sneer. _Who’s behaviour is a problem now, huh?_

Thinking about it didn’t really make her feel better.

But she knew what did make her feel better, she thought as she sat up in her bed. Planning.

So she turned on her little study lamp and sat at her desk, scribbling into the back of her Gralean Literature notebook about her plan to uncover the truth behind the labs, to finally figure out what the hell was going on behind the closed doors her parents seemed so keen on shutting right before her face.

Well, now it was _her_ turn to slam the door in their faces. And she was sure she would relish it.

-

In the morning, when she woke, she found the kitchen empty, save for a little note card in the middle of the dining room table.

 _We have to do damage control because of you, so we’ve left early. As much as we’d love to be there with you -_ yeah, right, she scoffed - _we’re unfortunately going to leave breakfast in the fridge. Heat it up, get yourself to school safe, ok? Love you,_ _  
_ _-Mom and Dad_

They never said “Love you” unless they really wanted something. Even when they left her alone for weeks on end, The only thing she could think of that they could’ve wanted from her was her behavior. She crumpled up the note.

-

“Miss Highwind, would you like to read aloud passage eight for the class?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

It had been almost a month since The Incident. Life went back to its standard monotony, the animal in the pod long since forgotten.

“ _In her haste to run away, the young woman tripped over a gnarled tree root. Twisting her ankle, she fell palms-first onto the soft dirt, only to clumsily regain her footing and continue her mad dash from her pursuers.”_

Aranea was fourteen years, eleven months, and three days old. Twenty-seven days until she turned fifteen. If she weren’t grounded for the rest of the year, she’d be planning her party by now.

No point in crying over spilled milk.

_“Pleased with the way he’s managed to fluster his prey, the god slowed his chase, toying with her, giving her the slightest taste of freedom before ripping it apart from her delicate tongue. She couldn’t be going around burning herself on something so powerful - no, she was too dainty for that; too weak. She needed to be protected.”_

Her good behaviour allowed her one last visit to the facility, as a sort of test run to see if she’d been conditioned to never do something so foolish again. It was a close shave with the law - only because her parents were so respected and she was still so young did she get away with such a light slap on the wrist.

_“She could barely breathe. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off, her unused muscles were twitching with the effort it took to just hold her body up, and her nose felt like millions of tiny needles were poking her from the inside. But still she persevered, because she was no longer running for herself anymore. No, she had a much larger purpose in life, now.”_

“Thank you, Miss Highwind. You may take your seat.”

Aranea had resumed her daily life. She was fine with it.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She was absolutely _not_ fine with it.

But she let herself be put back in the place she belonged, anyway, and took her seat.

“Aranea? That’s your name, right?”

Aranea glanced up from her textbook. Who had whispered that?

“Hey!”

Aranea turned her head ever so slightly to her left, making eye contact with a boy with short black hair and dark eyes.

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing, I just wanted to say hi.”

“We’ve sat next to each other all year, and now you suddenly wanna say hi to me?” She scoffed, turning back to her textbook.

“No, I just-”

“Mister Callux, is there something you’d like to share with the class?” The sharp voice of the teacher resounded from the front of the classroom.

“No, Ma’am.”

“Well, then, I suggest you stop flirting with young Miss Highwind over there; I get the feeling your efforts are being wasted on her.”

Her face burned.

“N- No, Ma’am, I wasn’t-”

“Be quiet, or I’ll have you written up. Choose your next actions carefully, Mister Callux.”

The boy sighed. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Good. Now, returning to the topic of the interpretation of Daphne in this passage…”

“Say another fucking word to me again, and I’ll cut your tongue out,” Aranea whispered as quietly as she could, acid dripping from the edge of every word. The boy shifted away from her.

“...Yeah. Sorry.”

“Be fucking sorry,” she huffed as she returned to her reading.

-

She didn’t know how she found herself in this situation again. One moment, she was walking directly in front of her mom and dad, then next, they were gone, like they’d taken a turn she didn’t and forgot to mention it to her.

Similarly, she didn’t understand how she was in that stupid fucking pod room again. She’d worked so hard to get back some of the vague sense of normalcy before she’d nearly lost her parents their jobs, and she didn’t want to squander her month of work like... _this_.

Refusing to even look at the pods for more than a second necessary, Aranea turned to leave the room without a second thought, but…

“What? Where’s the door?!”

She ran up to the wall she _knew_ had the big door with the weird locking mechanism before, but it wasn’t there. Was this a different room, then? No, the pods and the light and even the positioning of the boxes are exactly the same as she recalled from nearly a month prior. Then where was the door?

Within a few minutes it didn’t matter, because the oddest of sensations suddenly came over her. She felt almost forced to turn around and head back to the pods. Every step she took was stilted and disjointed, as though she were battling with her own body over whether or not to take that step every. Single. Time.

At some point, she reached to pod containing the animal that had entranced her the first time. She didn’t quite understand why she was so drawn to it, but she put her hand against the glass anyway, in hopes that it might respond.

It didn’t. Or at least, it was too cloudy in here for her to see, and too dark in the room anyway to see, even if the liquid were clear. But the liquid wasn’t clear, it was dark green and thick and gooey and soaking into her socks and-

Wait.

Her left arm was numb, and she could feel absolutely nothing for reasons that escaped her right now, because she was more concerned with the fact that it had taken on almost a will of its own and had grabbed the nearest item, it being a long, bent pole, and had smashed the glass of the pod in, sending very large shards and viscous liquid absolutely _everywhere._

It fell out and oh gods it was human.

Mildly human, anyway - instead of clothing or even skin on the back, ~~it~~ he was plugged into the pod with a bunch of wires, all of which disconnected the second he collapsed forward into Aranea’s (no longer numb) arms.

She froze, and then took a moment to regain her thoughts, because it felt like every neuron in her brain was firing at once.

“My name is Aranea Highwind,” she started under her breath. “I am almost fifteen years old. I’m in my parent’s workplace, a laboratory. I’m holding a literal fucking child. I’ve destroyed government property after nearly months of good behaviour. I am so, _so_ fucked.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “Okay, ‘Nea, keep cool and don’t panic.” Her breathing became ragged. “You’re not really doing a great job of that but it’s okay, because a situation like this warrants freaking the fuck out. But try not to do that. But I guess it’s okay if you do, anyway. Fuuuck...”

Suddenly, she realized the boy was slipping out of her hands, and she adjusted him so he wouldn’t fall on the floor only to feel stabbing pain run up her arms. She looked down.

Apparently, in the adrenaline-fueled panic, she hadn’t noticed a large shard of glass had embedded itself into the soft skin of her forearm, and she was bleeding profusely.

“Ffffuckkkk……” she whimpered. Gently setting the kid down on the least glassy area near her, she pulled the offending object out as gently as she could. A few tears slipped out, but for the sake of her sanity she refused to let herself cry just yet. She was still bleeding, so she pulled off a sock and wrapped it around her wound. It would have to make do.

“Nngh…”

Aranea’s head snapped to the child.

He was stirring, albeit slowly, and as he pushed himself up, Aranea finally got a good look at him.

He was barely five years old. He had thin blonde hair on the top of his head, and he was so skinny, he looked like someone had superglued a bunch of sticks together and tacked on a dirty little head with two soulless eyes and a pair of cracked lips. For someone who’d just emerged from goo, he looked surprisingly dry.

He looked questioningly at Aranea. “Hnng?” He grunted at her.

Aranea took a deep breath. She was not equipped for this. She gulped.

“M- My name is Aranea Highwind. You are?” She tried.

He looked at her, blue eyes sifting through her grey ones, completely clueless. She threw her hands up in the air.

“Of course you don’t know how to speak. Why bother giving lab rats language?” She laughed, voice shaking. “It’s fine. It’s really, really fine. Don’t worry, kiddo, I’ll help you get out of here.” She brushed off her legs, the goo she was kneeling in dry enough that it flaked off with little to no residue. Lucky her.

She held the kid by his bony little arm as she picked him up. He was wearing a ratty grey shirt with the back cut out and equally ratty black shorts, both of which were too large for his frame and hung off him like morbid drapes. There were flakes of dried green goo sticking to his shirt, but when she leaned forward to brush them off of him, he flinched back as though she were going to strike him.

Which, when Aranea thought about it, was probably what he expected her to do, and that crushed her heart all the more. How many times had people reached for him only to hurt him? She thought about the number of times people reached for her, only to take advantage of her naïveté and hurt her.

It hurt to think about the similarities, so she didn’t. “Don’t worry,” she said as she slowed her movements, keeping her voice as soothing as possible. “I’m really not going to hurt you. I promise.”

He looked at her with something lurking behind his expression, but Aranea couldn’t tell what is was. She just reached out and, as slowly and gently as she could, patted away what was at this point green dust. If her heart audibly broke at how he seemed to want to run away every time she made contact, she didn’t let it show.

“...rm…”

“Huh?”

He wasn’t meeting her eyes anymore, but she knew he definitely tried to say something.

Aranea decided it was better to leave it than pester him. She needed him to cooperate with her after all, and he absolutely wouldn’t do that if she were an annoying nag, something her own mother could benefit from understanding.

Fuck.  _Mom_.

“Aaaargh…” Aranea groaned aloud, smothering her good hand down her face in exasperation. What the hell was her mom gonna think when she found out that Aranea managed to fuck up yet again?

“Wah!”

While she was immersed in her thoughts, the boy had managed to leave her field of vision. When she looked around, he was tottering over to the boxes - tottering? A boy his age should already be familiar with walking, and Aranea didn’t really want to think about what that implied - and was tentatively touching the cardboard.

He suddenly began patting the boxes aggressively, turning around to face Aranea with wide eyes as his tiny body shook with how hard he was hitting the boxes, making content noises. She wanted to laugh, but couldn’t find anything in her other than pity. It hurt.

But then she remembered they were still in a government facility that would likely want this kid back for whatever sick, fucked-up tests they were doing to him, and the pain in her heart morphed into ice in her blood. Looking around the perimeter of the ceiling, she spotted two video cameras that most definitely captured both her face and her crime, one of which was currently trained directly at her.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she breathed out. The boy stopped hitting the boxes and recoiled his arms, likely sensing her tension. They couldn’t stay here for much longer.

Aranea ran up to the kid and grabbed his arm, ignoring his cry. She shushed him, then scoured every wall, in hopes of finding a door. Just like when she first came here, though, there was no door to be seen.

“Shit,” she cursed under her breath. There _had_ to be an exit somewhere, she knew. But it wasn’t freaking revealing itself, and she was starting to lose her patience. The boy didn’t show much emotion, but the frail arm in her grip was shaking like a leaf in a snowstorm.

She sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She let go of his arm, but her fingers lingered on the spot she just left, the dark beginnings of a bruise. “I- I didn’t mean to hurt you, either. Dammit, I can’t do _anything_ right!” She stomped around, the sound echoing in the metal room. “My mom had a point, didn’t she, when she said that I’d-”

A happy cry and a beam of light in her periphery cut her off abruptly. She turned, shielding her eyes from the onslaught of light, and when she finally removed her hand, Aranea saw the young boy standing in front of an opening that sure as hell was _not_ there before.

“Wh-What?!” She shook her head. Now was not the time to be looking at gift horses in the mouth a she was just granted an escape for Shiva’s sake!

But the boy ran through the doorway before Aranea could get a hold of him, and the second he crossed the threshold, an alarm began blaring loud enough to rattle Aranea’s brain.

_ATTENTION MAGITEK PRODUCTION FACILITY EMPLOYEES: CODE YELLOW. THIS IS NOT A DRILL._

“Aw, fuck,” groaned Aranea, just before sprinting after the boy.


	2. daymare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> surviving is hard.

The hallways of the magitek production facility felt endless. She knew this place like the back of her hand - well, was  _ supposed _ to know this place, at least - and now all of a sudden, she was somewhere she didn’t recognize, chasing after a lab rat kid who she barely knew, in a situation she had no idea how she got into.

“This is  _ fine, _ ” she mumbled to herself. “This is just  _ great. _ ”

She followed the tiny pattering of footsteps and the giggling of a child, echoing eerily all along the laboratory walls.  _ Yeah, this feels like a low-budget horror film. _ Her own footsteps sounded ten times louder than they should have, and only after peering down dozens of similar hallways does she realize this section of the lab seems to be populated by absolutely no one.

No scientists, no guards, no experimental Magitek Soldiers or other types of MT Units, no nosy interns with better things to do, and definitely no proper security. Even the cameras seems to be in shitty condition, pointed straight to the ground, rust along their sides and filling the time-worn grooves. Some don’t even have lenses.

Speaking of shitty conditions, as Aranea takes a moment to actually take in her surroundings while she runs around, she noticed that the cameras weren’t the only things neglected here. In fact, this whole maze of hallways seemed to be dilapidated, rusting and crumbling and on its last legs, looking like it might crumble and fall on her head at any moment. 

“Shiva have mercy, and let this freaking dump not collapse on my head. Also it’d be pretty sick if you let me find the kid too, but beggars can’t be choosers, right?”

She ran. She kept running, because the footsteps were fading, and the giggles were becoming few and far between, and now her heartbeat was ten times normal because where was he? Had he fallen into some trap? Gotten injured? Astrals forbid, maybe someone  _ was _ here and he got caught?

_ Stupid kid _ , she mumbled, before the shame of what she’d just said hit her. She can’t blame the kid. He’d probably been stored in the pod his entire life.

Ruminating on what might have been in the boy’s past was what kept from paying very close attention to her surroundings, and then suddenly she-

“Oof!”

“Wah!”

A tiny cry and an eruption of pain from her injured arm alerted her that she had rammed into the boy full speed on her bad side while turning a particularly sharp corner. With a soft thud, the child fell sflat on his butt on the ground, a low, pained moan coming from his chapped lips.

“Oh, shit, there you are!” She sighed in relief, the panic seizing her heart finally easing; but only slightly. “Don’t run off like that again, okay?”

She knew he likely couldn’t understand her, but the sadness in his eyes let her know he, at the very least, understood she wasn’t particularly happy with him. The kid’s huge blue eyes got watery, and his lower lip got real wobbly, and oh fuck he’s crying. LIke all-out bawling. The way children do when they get their little baby dreams crushed, except this kid probably wasn’t allowed to have dreams, but those were minor details that Aranea chose to ignore in the face of bigger problems, and that was the guilt of making this kid cry weighing on her heart.

“Aw, come on, kiddo.” She pulled him in for a hug. He went stiff as a board, his hands curled protectively against his chest. She let him go. “Sorry. Just, please, stop- stop wailing, okay? It’s real loud and, and people might here and catch us, so you gotta be quiet, okay?”

He furrowed his eyebrows at her. Blinked away the tears. Once, twice. Wasn’t enough, because a few more slipped out, but with a sniffle or two, he’d stopped wailing. Aranea let herself smile.

“Okay, step number one,” she said, standing up, fingers interlocked with thin, shivery ones. “Let’s find a way out.”

Now that she wasn’t searching for a lost child on the lam anymore, she was able to properly observe her surroundings. Yes, this place was old and crumbling, that much she’d managed to see earlier. But she didn’t notice the long panels of glass that allowed her to see within the walls that seemed to trap the duo in this maze.

She peered in. Darkness. She stepped away.

The boy made a tiny chirping sound, something akin to a happy bird, and when Aranea took a look at him, he was pointing to the far off wall.

“A dead end, kiddo. Whaddaya want me to do about it?”

He made another sound, but this time it was a bit more… forceful. He tugged on her hand and pointed even harder. Aranea rolled her eyes.

“ _ Fine _ , fine, if you’ll shut up about it,” she grumbled. She let him lead the way, dragging her behind him, all the way up to the wall covered in rust and dust. “See? Nothing here,” she said, gesturing to the wall.

The boy made a sound that suspiciously resembled a “harrumph,” and suddenly struck the wall. The resounding metallic echo was loud enough to ring in Aranea’s ears.

“Hey, what the fuck-!” She yelped, covering her ears, only to see the thick layer of dust begin to crumble away from the wall.

She watched in aw as the kid began pawing at rusted iron and dusty mechanics, not caring if his skin got snagged on a stray bent piece of wire here and there. She could see the blood beginning to color his fingertips, but he didn’t seem to notice, and he was so intent on… whatever his goal was, Aranea wasn’t sure if she’d be able to stop him, anyway.

When he finally stopped, she was finally able to notice the words painted in Imperial red and silver, trademark colors of the Niflheimian Empire:

**EXIT**

“Well, fuck, I feel kinda dumb, now,” Aranea chuckled, too stunned to tend to his wounds. How had he known about the exit? The words were unreadable underneath the decades worth of grime and decay.

It didn’t matter now, because the boy was raising the back of his hand - no, his wrist - up to the circle in the middle of the long line that ran down the center of the wall, and the outer rim of the circle flashed red, then blue, then green, and a distorted voice that she would definitely hear in her nightmares echoed from the circle, and the line parted.

A gust of wind blew in, and snowflakes began seeping through the door. Moonlight streamed through the opening.  _ Was it already dark outside? _

She stepped out, regretting her decision to remove her socks, because now she was cold as Shiva’s tits.

“Fucking Astrals, it’s cold as Shiva’s tits out here,” she said.

From the landscape that met her, Aranea could only see mountains. Icy capped gargantuan structures made of immovable rock faced her from all directions, effectively trapping her and the kid that she guesses she’s babysitting now. She rolled her eyes, teeth chattering all the while, as she stomped over in the several inches of snow to the boy who had walked away from her and stopped suddenly.

“Kid, what’s up?” She tapped his shoulder. He didn’t respond. He wasn’t shivering, so she assumed he couldn’t feel things like the cold because she had no other explanation as to why he was knee-deep in the Niflheimian winterlands and  _ not _ shivering.

She tried to turn him around to get a better look at him, but he stubbornly refused to move, so Aranea had to walk around him and bend to his height. She was expecting possibly shock, maybe amazement as the prospect of snow. She’d read books about people from outside of Niflheim who’d never experienced snow being enamored by the sight, and so she assumed the same about the boy.

She was not, however, expecting the fat, opaque black tears running down his face.

“What the  _ fuck- _ ” she yelps as she stumbled backwards, landing in the pillowy snow. He sniffed, his snot equally tarrish in color. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Why are you leaking black?”

He merely looked at her, still crying without making a sound, then crouched down into the snow, sticking both of his hands in the snow. He grabbed handfuls of the stuff, only to have it become a loose powder in his hands, blown away by the wind within moments. The boy still cried, gurgling something in his unintelligible voice.

“Whe- ah- hnng,” he wailed, but he was smiling this time. Aranea could barely keep up with him. He repeated himself, sticking his hands in the untouched snow around him and coming back up quickly. It appeared as though he learnt that if he stood up fast enough, the snow seemed to jump with him, and it blowing away seemed to entertain the child to no end.

Aranea couldn’t figure out why he was still cry-  _ oh _ . Now she got it. She never thought the frigid snow would be so welcome a sight that it would move someone to tears, but she also didn’t think she’d find a literal human lab rat, so she guessed today was just gonna be full of a lot of revelations like this. Now, if she could just figure the mystery behind the black tears…

“Ah!” Aranea felt a tugging on her uniform shirt, pulling her out of her thoughts. The kid was trying to get her attention.

“Wh- what is it, kiddo?” She picked herself up out of the pile of snow she was sitting in and brushed herself off. He pointed to the valley between two mountains far off into the distance, loudly vocalizing to emphasize his point, whatever it was. She couldn’t see anything.

“Look, kid, I don’t really see any- whoa, get _ down! _ ”

A light shone in their direction, coming straight from the valley where he had pointed towards. She dove into the snow pile she’d just gotten up from, dragging the boy down with her with a tiny little “oof!” From behind the pile, she carefully observed as the light moved around the entire area around them, only to go back and forth and back and forth and oh Astrals, that isn’t a searchlight, those are headlights, aren’t they?

Aranea sighed, relief melting off of her in waves. Where there were cars, there was civilization, and where there was civilization, there was help. Usually. Hopefully.

“Nice eye, kiddo. Hey, sorry about the whole dragging you into the snow thing,” she added when she noticed his pout as he did his best to brush off the snow on his head. “Promise not to do that again, ok?” She held her pinky out, and he looked at her like she grew a third hand.

Right, pinky promises aren’t exactly a thing laboratories.

She reached over and grabbed his hand, bringing it to her own and ensnaring his pinky finger with hers. “Promise,” she said, fondness in her voice. He looked at her again, then beamed.

“Pom!”

-

So after approximately ten whole minutes of walking, the kid passed out.

It had nearly given Aranea a heart attack; they’d been heading downhill when she suddenly heard a thump and skid, looked over, and saw the boy had fallen over and was slowly sliding downhill, and fast.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” she said as she scrambled over to where he was, quickly digging his tiny body out of the snow and oh gods that sounds so bad, she didn’t really even want to think about it.

He was still breathing, to Aranea’s immense relief, and he seemed responsive when she shook, not very out of it - just real tired. Aranea didn’t blame it. It’d been a long ass day, and she’d like the luxury of passing out cold (no pun intended) like he did.

With a “one, two, three!” Aranea hoisted him into her arms, cradling his body against hers as she carried him. In retrospect, she probably should’ve cleared the snow from his body before holding him so closely to her body, because now she has four or five handfuls of snow trapped between the both of them, but she decided to bear with it and leave it for now. Hopefully, she thought, their combined body heat would be enough for the snow to melt quickly.

Maneuvering the mountainous Niflheimian terrain with a malnourished five year old is significantly harder than one would think. For such a skinny child, when he was completely knocked out, he weighed quite a bit. More than once Aranea found herself struggling to keep herself from stumbling with the weight on her back shifting every time he turned in his sleep.

But each time she turned around to check on him, she’d see his chubby cheek resting on her shoulder, every odd puff of air accompanied with a tiny whistle, drooling a little - it gave her a little push to go a little further, a little faster. She’d never been responsible for someone else like this before. It was exhilarating.

-

The bottom of the mountain was a welcome relief. Not only that, but tucked away, behind the forest of evergreens at the base of the mountain lied a clearing, one where you could clearly see a small cave, perfect for hiding.

She sprinted, gripping the boy tighter, enough so that he woke up with a cry of discomfort.

“Sorry, kiddo,” she hastily apologized. “Just hold on for a minute, okay? We’re almost there, I swear.”

He just whimpered and buried his head into the bend of her neck, and she could feel the way his eyes scrunched against the cold wind that was probably biting him the same way it was biting her.

“Sorry, kid,” she mumbled to no one in particular about nothing in particular.

-

He’d remained quiet as she gently placed him on the ground in the cave. They were deep enough in that the wind wasn’t as big of an issue anymore, but the icy chill in the air was somehow worse. They’d have to make do.

Clutching her arms and wishing she were wearing her blazer right now, she flopped onto the ground gracelessly, leaning against the cold walls of the cave. She sighed.  _ What the hell am I going to do now? Actually, what the hell am I doing? _ She leaned forward, dropping her head between her knees, and fell asleep, still shivering.

-

When she woke up, the child was still in deep sleep. It was bright enough that Aranea could tell it was no longer nighttime, but the storm clouds obscured the sunlight so much it was still grey and dark outside. It wasn’t devastatingly windy anymore, though, so at least she had that going for her, she guessed.

Before the kid woke up, she decided, she was going to try and set up a campfire. Somehow. Her physical education class mentioned something about wilderness survival, because the number of children getting lost in the unforgiving Niflheimian tundra was far higher than ideal (though Aranea supposed having even one child lost in the tundra was bad enough), so there was definitely a course on how to survive the cold. Now Aranea’s only concern was if she was paying enough attention that day to remember what the hell to do now.

“Wood?” She mumbled to herself. “Uh, there was kindling, I think… but I don’t have any paper on me,” she sighed. “Is there even any wood dry enough to set on fire? All that snow probably made it wet, right…” She trailed off as she unwound the sock that was still around her arm and put it on her foot. She was already wearing boots that reached the middle of her shin, but any extra protection was always good.

From behind her came a small noise. She turned, and the boy was sitting upright, shaking like a leaf.

“Aw, fuck, kid,” she said, rushing over to him. She pulled him into a hug, cringing at the feel of skin, so cold it almost felt dead. She pulled away, rubbing her hands along his arms to generate just a little bit of frictional heat. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything to warm you up right now, but I promise I’ll be back and we’ll have a fire.” She sighed. “Hopefully.”

Aranea got up. “Stay here, okay?” He looked at her, his eyes boring holes into her own. A little unnerved, she stepped back. “Okay. Not like there’s anywhere for you to go right now, anyway,” she reasoned, then set out.

-

“Fucking stupid trees and their stupid branches that’re too fucking high for me to reach. Stupid fucking genes making me short. Fuck you, legs,” she grumbled, jumping for the lowest hanging branches on the shortest tree she could find, still about a foot short of the absolute lowest branch.

“Gods  _ damn it, _ ”  she yelled into the snow, at the end of her rope when she landed face-first into a snowbank after a slightly miscalculated jump. “I’m gonna fucking destroy all of these godsdamned trees, I fucking swear.” At that exact moment, a brittle branch broke off under the stress of so much snow on it and landed on the back of her skull with a resounding  _ thud _ .

Swallowing her pride, she grabbed the branch and stalked off back to the cave, bruised ego and all.

-

Warmth. Heat. Red orange yellow white grey silver pink-

Vague concepts and flashes of color met Test Subject 1987 as he slowly came to. An unidentifiable foreign substance was in his eyes, creating an odd crusty layer that he had to rub at to remove so he could actually see.

Once he could, however, he was met with the tall female who had led him out of the facility.  _ Field test _ , the words echoed in his mind,  _ Test Subject 1987, this is a field test. _

He didn’t know what those words meant, only that he must behave and maybe then he would not be corrected.

So he stood up, spine straight as a ramrod, and promptly fell over into the woman’s lap.

The world spun as she spoke, words unfamiliar to him spewing out of her mouth with a rapidfire accent that didn’t allow him to parse a single word. He merely mumbled a “hunh?” once she was done making noise, and it caused her to heave a sigh so great, even he felt it in his bones. Only then did he notice that his hand was right next to a source of extreme heat, and when he turned and looked, his entire arm was just up against a dancing amalgamate of reds and oranges and yellows, an image he’d never have come up with in his very limited imagination.

He reached for the colors, only for the woman to make a loud noise and yank him back into the ice cold no no no it’s so  _ cold _ -

“Hey!” She yelled, the only word he could make out. He looked up. “Fuck.” Another one of the few words he was familiar with. “Are you alright?” None of those were in his vocabulary. He stored away the sound data for (what he assumed was) each individual word, to be analyzed and reevaluated at a later date.

She continued to make noise again, and he could do nothing but stare at her. He took his time to see exactly who it was that was conducting his “field test,” because he’d never seen her in the facility before.

She had hair lighter than any of his copies, green eyes, but not quite the same color as the radioactive goop - there was a little bit of a darker color, something like the food he’d get - a  _ brown _ of a sort, though he didn’t know the word for that. She had spots like him on his face, and the same type of skin: pale, pinkish, and translucent in the right light settings.

In his data center, he created a custom profile for her, just as he did for every other scientist at the facility, so he could keep track. As he let his independent computing algorithms search his constructed profile for possible matchups and patterns, he continued to listen to her speak.

“We……… hou, when………...and that……..so y….just like a……….ou know?”

He closed his eyes. Only bits and pieces were coming to him, and his speech recognition program was working overtime with no results. He’d have to rely on learning her language the old-fashioned way by speaking in a language that he knew, and hoping she’d meet him halfway. Seeing as they’re still in Niflheim, if his positioning system hasn’t malfunctioned yet again, he assumed that Royal Niflheimian would be suitable, as it would be a language she was probably familiar with.

Subject 1987 opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

-

Aranea watched as the boy opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and closed it once more. It would be funny, watching him blubber like a fish, had he not looked so distressed. His eyes were filled to the brim with shiny tears, just waiting to spill over; Aranea was  _ not _ about to deal with a crying child.

“Crap, okay, uh, it’s okay,” she tried to say soothingly. “Don’t- don’t cry, okay? Ah, no, it’s not working, um-” Panicking, she leaned over and pat his head. Kids like head pats, right?

This kid did not. His face screwed up and put his hands to his eyes and cried. Loudly. And then immediately stopped. The face he made was so bewildered, Aranea couldn’t help but laugh at him.

He opened his mouth again and made a noise that didn’t sound like anything. Squishing his face and moving his jaw, he sounded like a newborn trying to figure out his vocal cords worked. For all Aranea knew, they really didn’t let him learn how his vocal cords worked. That thought got her blood boiling. It was a good thing she was sitting on a pile of snow.

“Hey, uh…” She stopped. “K-Kid?” Gods, he doesn’t have a name - that’s pretty inhumane, right?”

He stops wallowing in his sadness, but doesn’t look at her, just closes his mouth and stares at the ground.

She doesn’t remember what she was going to say, though, so she closes her mouth and stares at the ground with him.

It’s silent for a while.

-

At night time, when the child’s eyes looked like they were becoming magnetically attracted to one another and the fire refused to fight the breeze coming in from the cave entrance, she drew herself closer to him, hoping that body heat might be enough to keep them both warm during the night.

_ Living in a cave isn’t going to work for much longer. I’ve got to get out of here by tomorrow at the latest. _

Leaning up against a wall and immediately regretting the cold shock that ran through her, she put her arm around the boy and let his head rest on her shoulders. Immediately, he began straightening up, as though he weren’t allowing himself to rest, but the exhaustion caught up to him and within moments, he was completely out.

For the first time, she looked closer at his face. His eyelashes were the same pale blond as the hair on his eyebrows and his head. He had freckles, really faint ones just like hers; Aranea figured that if he had freckles already, even with the little exposure to sunlight that he’d had, they’d be a lot more pronounced once he actually started walking around in the daylight.

Fuck, they never let him out in the sun, did they? What the fuck were her parents doing, experimenting on little kids, children who were practically babies? He can’t talk, can’t read, doesn’t understand even the most basic of social cues - what the hell were they doing to him over there?

Thinking about it, about her parents, about the lab, it all made her chest twist up like someone was reaching in there and looking for something unsuccessfully. So she pushed the thought out of her mind, because dismantling a cruel system was, although definitely on her to-do list (with no explanation of  _ how _ ), not her current priority. That title was awarded to the blond fluff of hair tucked away under her arm, tickling her skin and warming her side.

She was glad she at least remembered about body heat from those wilderness survival classes.

**Author's Note:**

> [i exist on the bird site](https://twitter.com/_Anukutti_)


End file.
